Sugar Shane Mosley stood on the dais Thursday at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and said that if he had his druthers, he would rather fight Kermit Cintron than Luis Collazo on Feb. 10 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

Mosley (43-4, 37 KOs) had signed to fight Cintron for his International Boxing Federation welterweight belt, but Cintron had to pull out because of promotional problems. So Collazo it is.

Mosley’s declaration was a curious moment. As it is, Collazo is already full of confidence, thanks to his showing against the terrific Ricky Hatton in their fight last May 13 in Boston. Collazo, a virtual unknown from Brooklyn, gave Hatton all he could handle but lost his World Boxing Association welterweight belt via a close, yet unanimous decision.

Mosley’s words may have given Collazo even more incentive to show everyone his performance against Hatton was no fluke.

“It is what it is,” said Mosley, who will fight Collazo for the World Boxing Council interim welterweight title. (HBO will televise). “People need to know when I get in there with a certain person and I win the fight, that it’s not just a nobody with no name. This guy is a great fighter.”

Great may be a stretch, but one thing’s certain: Collazo is now held in much higher esteem than he was pre-Hatton.

“Yeah, but I don’t let it get to my head,” said the soft-spoken Collazo, a slick-working southpaw who is 27-2 with 13 knockouts. “I’m still the same humble guy. I’m training harder now because I just believed that this opportunity would come around and I’m just grateful for it.”

Heading into his fight with Collazo, Hatton was coming off a spectacular 11th-round technical knockout of the great Kostya Tszyu and a ninth-round knockout of Carlos Maussa.

Many fighters in Collazo’s position would have been intimidated. Not Collazo.

“In this game, if you ain’t mentally right, mentally ready, you might as well just give it up,” said Collazo, 25. “I believe 80 percent of the game is mental and 20 percent is physical.”

And because he gave Hatton more than anyone thought he would, Collazo is back in the limelight for the second time in less than a year after never having been there before.

“Mosley is the only one who stepped up to the plate,” Collazo said. “We tried to get a fight with (World Boxing Organization champion Antonio Margarito) and some other guys in the welterweight division, as well as (WBA champion Miguel) Cotto; now (Cotto) is holding the belt I had.

“That’s how the ballgame works. You gotta just stay focused and stay in the gym and just wait for the opportunity to come around.”